It's official. America is out of the race. In the new budget Obama has cut funding from NASAs Constellation Program. The Constellation Program, possibly the only positive, forward thinking plan to come out of George W. Bush's reign of terror, was a program aimed to send American astronauts back to the moon by 2020 to begin construction of a lunar base. Billions of dollars had already been spent in development of America's new Ares class launch vehicles which were set to succeed the aging Space Shuttles. Unfortunately Obama did not find it pertinent to make sure there is a replacement to the Space Shuttle which is retiring this year.
Alternatively to continued funding of the Constellation Program and the Ares rockets, Obama has decided (reduced) funding would be given to NASA in order to have them contract out space launches to companies SpaceX and Orbital Sciences. Also, instead of funding further efforts to land on the moon, funding will be put into extending the life of the International Space Station (the biggest waste of time and money ever) to 2020. So what does the future hold for the American space program? Well private corporations will launch American astronauts to the International Space Station for 10 more years, at which point the space station will fall into disrepair and go the way of Mir. Then, America will have no space station, no launch vehicle, no lunar lander, no lunar base and no plan for the future of space.
So what's the deal? Why is Obama turning his back on space supremacy? Why is he allowing Russia and China to become the new leaders in the final frontier? Economy? The aerospace industry employs thousands in America. Then what is it? Its commercial interests. Again. Whoever said Obama was a socialist (every tea-bagger in America) was a flipping idiot. Obama is a die-hard capitalist. NASA had a good thing going being a publicly funded aerospace organization. Efficient, well directed, with unified goals. Now Obama is selling out to corporations that will be horribly inefficient ending up costing tax-payers more, and poorly directed, with no central goal or destination, and for what? To create commercial competition in the space market?
There are better ways to commercialize space and none of them involve shafting the public option. This industry is in its infancy, to attempt to create commercial competition when the only two contracts in the world are SpaceX and Orbital Sciences is ineffective beyond belief. Only when space technology becomes profitable, say by extracting resources from the moon or asteroids, will it be commercially viable to open a space firm. Otherwise, companies will continue to be contracted by governments who could do the job themselves more efficiently anyway. What's more a corporation's sole goal is to profit whereas the goal of governments in space is to explore and expand our reach. Is the United States going to lead the way in giving up on exploration?
Will any of this work? Maybe, just maybe the possibility of launching satellites and astronauts into space will cause a growth in the number and strength of space firms across America and the world. It is possible that commercial and government interaction could make the industry grow? It would require a lot of input and stimulus from governments. People don't care for space technology, and it must be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that this technology is profitable to investors. Sub-orbital space flight is an area where there is sure to be growth for space tourists, but will companies like Virgin move beyond that and pioneer Virgin space? They will not do it without encouragement. Maybe, with the right funding, 20 years down the road we'll see upwards of a dozen space firms blasting off from around the world. Let us hope something good comes from cutting funding to NASA.
0 comments:
Post a Comment